Monday, November 4, 2013

Los Angeles Master Chorale and Orchestra perform Verdi and Orff

By Douglas Neslund

There is no subtle way to
unleash or finish Carl Orff’s popular Carmina
burana in performance. From the very downbeat of O Fortuna (Wheel of Fortune), one gets a lap- and earful of youthful
fun and games set to full chorus and orchestra by Carl Orff, the Bavarian
composer better known in some quarters for his elementary music education
system. In Carmina, Orff seeks to
evoke basic emotional involvement through unapologetic, driving rhythms (early
minimalism!) and exotic instrumentation and vocalisms.

Orff found the manuscripts
in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, not (as noted elsewhere) in the
Benedictine Abbey in Benediktbeuern, a quaintly beautiful bend in the Bavarian
road from Munich to Northern Italy via Austria, despite the town’s name in the
title. How the Latin and Middle High German texts arrived in Benediktbeuern
from their likely beginnings in Kloster Neustift in Brixen, a German-speaking
village of Northern Italy, is unknown.

Kloster Neustift, Brixen, Italy

In any case, it is thought
that goliards, unemployed youth of the day, spread the genre throughout
civilized Europe. As a generation, they were not unlike Occupy youth of today, openly
criticizing both civil and clerical authority through satirical poetry and
prose.

The 24 poems and
narratives chosen by Orff from the original 254 is that of bawdy sex and
backgammon, and in some cases probably not the actual stuff of monks’ life in
13th century Alpine Europe. In fact, it is thought by some that
texts appearing to be “love songs” are really satirical tributes or
spoofs of the dead, or even the Church itself.

Soloists in Carmina burana on this evening of
glorious choral and orchestral music-making were Stacey Tappan, a soprano
capable of singing the very wide ranging score; José Adán Pérez, a baritone who
emoted appropriately (that is, the entire time, including stage entrances and
exits) and displayed a ringing voice spoiled by too many out-of-tune entrances;
and Timothy Gonzales, who portrayed the dying goose on the spit with equal
portions of self parody and helpless falsetto.

Although Orff’s manuscript
stipulates a boys’ choir in two of the movements, the Los Angeles Children’s
Chorus (Anne Tomlinson, director), were employed in that role. Interestingly,
the composer stated to Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden, the director of the Tölzer
Knabenchor prior to the premiere performance and recording, that it was his
intention that the boys should sound like five- or six-year old “quackers” and
not polished singers. In that regard, the LACC kids failed to quack, singing
instead with their expected perfection of pitch, tone and absolutely unwiggly
stage demeanor.

Steve Scharf assembled a
wonderful orchestra for this happy occasion, proving once again that Los Angeles
stands second to no other place on earth when it comes to world-class
musicians. As we have said so many times throughout the past decade, the Los
Angeles Master Chorale stands second to no other chorus on earth.

All of the above forces
dedicated their infinite talents to Maestro Grant Gershon, whose attention to
detail is phenomenal. Watching him work is a joy to behold. Nothing is missed, singers
and players alike are never in doubt, and the result is as close to recording-session
perfection as a live concert can possibly be. Finding new superlatives to
describe Master Chorale performances is becoming ever more difficult!

The opening opus, minus
the children’s chorus, was Giuseppe Verdi’s Te
Deum, the last of four parts to his tetralogy Quattro pezzi sacri, composed in 1895-96 and published in Verdi’s
85th year (1898), a major work for double chorus and large
orchestra.

The Te Deum is not a long work, but packs a mighty wallop where required. The Chorale women were particularly stunning on their several a cappella entrances.

The only reminders that we
were not actually sitting in a recording session all happened within the space
of a minute, just before intermission: a flubbed trumpet attack on a particular note brought to the
audience’s attention by Maestro Gershon, a peculiar wobbly solo soprano, perhaps
made even wobblier by the trumpet’s goof, and when the moment that was no
longer magical ended, a cell phone in the audience rang on and on until
applause drowned its ugly intrusion.

The two works on the
program shared a common “wall of sound” fortissimo+ opportunity that, with the
Master Chorale sitting in the benches above the staged orchestra, brilliantly
showed the true acoustic balance of Walt Disney Concert Hall. (When the
musicians are all down on stage, there can be a “sizzle” effect at least for
those patrons sitting in the third balcony.) What we heard last night was
astonishing clarity. The Master Chorale has, in recent years, been especially
noted for clear textual enunciation, and last night, acoustic translucence was especially
brilliant.

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Finally, the usually
brilliant program notes of Thomas May were sullied by discredited
references to Nazism in which Orff was never a participant. No proof exists
that he was interested in National Socialism in the slightest; if the Nazis loved his music, that is irrelevant. One would hope
that such a canard and libelous reference would once and for all be omitted whenever Carminaburana is performed in the future.

Thanks for this! It is my honor to work with Grant and the Chorale and to be able to find musicians that display their enthousiasm. It is always my goal to help the music speak to the public.Thank you for noticing!Steve Scharf